Newsletter Number 17 - Library Home page

photo: Emmanuel Joseph
LABOR ARCHIVES and
RESEARCH CENTER
San Francisco State University
Filipino Labor Leaders
When the Stockton Chapter of the Filipino American
National Historical Society needed images for their 2007
calendar honoring local leaders, they came to the Labor
Archives. A pivotal event highlighted in the calendar was the
1948 asparagus strike, the first major agricultural work
stoppage after World War II.
By the end of the war, the
farming community of
Stockton was home to the
largest Filipino community
outside of the Philippines.
Agricultural workers had
been organized in the 1930s
by the country’s first
Filipino-led union – the
Cannery Workers and Farm
Laborers Union Local
18257 (later the Food,
Tobacco, Agricultural and
Allied Workers, Local 7).
An example of industrial
organizing, the union was
based in Seattle and
represented the
“Alaskeros” – migrant
workers who toiled in the Alaska salmon canneries in the
summer and the fields of California during the rest of the
year.
Led by Chris Mensalvas and Ernesto Mangaoang, the 1948
walkout involved over 4000 workers, 90 percent of whom
were Filipino. Central issues included better pay, decent
housing and an end to the “hold back” system where
growers kept 50% of a workers’ pay until the end of the
season. The police response to the strike was brutal - dozens
were arrested and hundreds were evicted from their homes.
Pictured in the calendar is a thousand-strong worker march
in downtown Stockton that occurred at the height of the
strike, along with an image (upper right corner) of Larry
Itliong, a Filipino organizer who later went on to initiate the
famous five-year Delano grape strike that galvanized the
farm worker movement of the 1960s.
Newsletter No. 17, Spring 2007
The Filipino American National Historical Society used this
page to promote the calendar, which sold out so quickly the
president of the Society didn’t get a copy!
Save The Date
The Labor Archives and Research Center’s 21st
annual program will be held on February 23, 2007.
Keynote speaker Chris Rhomberg, author of No There,
There: Race, Class and Political Community in Oakland,
will examine the 1946 Oakland General Strike and the
role of labor in the postwar East Bay.
The program begins at 7:00 p.m., with refreshments at 6:00
p.m. The location is ILWU Local 34, King and Second
Streets, on the Embarcadero next to the ballpark.
Union Leaders: the Deadline for Ads in Our Program
Book is February 16, 2007!
Hot Off the Presses
Now you can own the best
collection of rebel workers’
songs and poems ever
compiled: all the songs that
appeared in the Industrial
Workers of the World’s
celebrated “little red
songbook” from 1909
through 1973!
Edited by Archie Green,
David Roediger Franklin
Rosemont, and Salvatore
Salerno, The Big Red
Songbook is available through Charles H. Kerr Publishers,
1740 West Greenleaf, Chicago, IL 60626.
FAVORITE QUOTES
San Mateo County Central Labor Council’s Shelley
Kessler loves this classic quote from Mother Jones so
much she has it hanging on the wall at home:
“Pray for the Dead and
Fight Like Hell for the Living”
100 Year Anniversary of the 1907 Streetcar Strike
by John Skovgaard
Excerpt from the forthcoming LARC
publication San Francisco Labor
Landmarks Guidebook: A Register
of Sites and Walking Tours.
On the morning of May 7th, 1907, a crowd of 5,000
people—streetcar operators, their supporters, and the
just curious—gathered outside the barricaded Turk and
Fillmore Streets car barn operated by the United
Railroads of San Francisco. Two days before, the 2,000
members of Division 205 of the Amalgamated Association
of Employees of Street Railways of America had gone on
strike, demanding $3.00 for an eight-hour day. At that
time United Railroads and its owner, Patrick Calhoun,
held a near monopoly on streetcar services in San
Francisco. Calhoun refused the demands of the Carmen
and instead hired 5,000 armed scabs under the direction
of James A. Farley, the “King of the Strikebreakers,”
housing them in the company’s car barns.
At 11 a.m. the barricaded doors opened; out rolled a
single streetcar operated by strikebreakers armed with
revolvers. As the car reached the street, it was greeted
with jeers from the crowd, and someone threw a bat at
the streetcar. The strikebreakers responded by firing into
the crowd and when the smoke cleared two men from the
crowd were dead, several others wounded. The
bloodiest strike in San Francisco had lurched toward its
most deadly phase.
Over the next several months, at least 25 people were
killed and over 2,000 injured. The armed scabs were
quick to fire their pistols in confrontations with the striking
photo courtesy of the San Francisco Public Library
Carmen on San Francisco’s crowded streets. Many of
them were not properly trained, adding to the dangers
already posed by nervous men armed with guns. The
strikers, for their part, often sabotaged the cars and rail
lines, causing sometimes-fatal accidents. The police,
hesitant to side in a labor dispute at a time when both
unions and employers exercised considerable local political
power, rarely intervened, and the strike lasted until late fall.
By then all the Carmen had been replaced by scab labor
and the union was in a shambles.
Yet what seemed a defeat at the time proved to have
positive consequences for later union activities. The police
inactivity, while inimical to law and order, set a precedent
allowing unions to go out on strike with the knowledge that,
unlike those in most other cities at the time, police officers
would not be used as armed goons for the employers to
protect strikebreakers as they had been used in the 1901
teamsters’ strike.
A Moveable Feast
by Catherine Powell
The Labor Archives recently received a wealth of material
from members of Transport Workers Union Local 250-A,
the San Francisco Municipal Drivers’ Union and current
incarnation of the Carmen’s Union involved in the 1907
Streetcar Strike. Larry Martin, a 38-year member and long
time president of the local, generously donated his personal
papers to LARC in the fall of 2006.
Wanting to ensure the local’s history
was fully documented, Larry then
persuaded his union brothers C.B.
Croft and Joseph Crossley to follow
suit by donating their own treasures.
These rich collections document
important efforts by Local 250-A,
including the fight for a 5-day work
week (as late as 1957 MUNI drivers
were working 6 days a week), and
the creation of their groundbreaking
MUNI Health and Safety Project to
combat the shocking rate of stressrelated illness and death among
drivers.
In addition to the scores of photographs, correspondence,
and pamphlets in his collection, Larry also graciously
passed on his first Muni driver’s cap, such as the ones
pictured below.
The Labor Archives and Research Center Newsletter is published quarterly. Edited by Catherine Powell. Questions and comments can be sent to:
Labor Archives and Research Center, 480 Winston Drive, San Francisco, CA 94132, (415) 564-4010, Email - [email protected]
LABOR ARCHIVES and RESEARCH CENTER NEWSLETTER
NO. 17, SPRING 2007
San Francisco State University
The Labor Archives has lost many dear friends this past
year - we wish to honor the following for their generosity,
support, and advocacy on behalf of LARC:
Joseph Freitas
Laurence Corbett
Tillie Olsen
Keith Eickman
Labor Archives and Research Center
San Francisco State University
480 Winston Drive
San Francisco, CA 94132
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